The Beave on Nostr: I think this note is a succinct summary of most of what ails nostr at the moment. I ...

I think this note is a succinct summary of most of what ails nostr at the moment. I have thoughts percolating about this and may comment on it later.

quoting
nevent1q…l745

There’s not a lot of money coming to devs from user Zaps, unfortunately. There’s also not much goodwill from alternative funding schemes or experienced OSS devs, thanks to Nostr’s reputation as an ad board and marketing tool for crypto companies.
As it is, the Nostr network self-selects for these companies and their potential customers, mass producing content that’s basically boring to everyone else.

The few users who stick around mostly give up on Kind 1 notes and retreat into closed communities. There might be a handful of people willing to play the role of activists or post other types of content regularly, but these are exceptions that prove the rule. You can't really curate your feed for content that isn't there. Algorithms won’t fix this either—it’s not a content discovery problem; it’s a community self-selection problem.

This isn’t some big secret or shady crypto conspiracy, though. Phrases like “The purple pill helps the orange pill go down” and “Keep Nostr weird” are some of the most popular Nostr influencer slogans. Even assuming good faith (and I know there are genuinely enthusiastic Bitcoin folks who aren’t out to profit off new users, as well as people who sincerely enjoy Nostr weirdness), the network’s self-selection and funneling of potential customers toward crypto companies is a feature, not a bug. Of course crypto companies are willing to invest development time and sponsor some Nostr devs—their incentives are perfectly aligned.

I wish it were different because Nostr (the protocol) has real potential. But as it stands, the ecosystem will keep self-selecting for crypto customers and crypto-backed devs for a while. Unfortunately, this comes at the expense of Nostr’s growth, value, and resilience as a network. Some very smart people (including some of Nostr's OG devs) are very aware of this and advocating for change.

Will things really change? I don’t know. Nostr’s in a semi-cozy “local maximum” right now, and the will to change might not lead to meaningful action. Even if action is taken, there’s no guarantee it’ll result in the outcomes users expect.